the event is at night. It is the light parade of disney's characters. It is a slow moving parade. The problem is that if I use flash, the magic of the night light parade is gone. I want to capture the very nice lights of it without any noise. By the way, distance would be 10-20 feet away.

Weeeell, if you're eliminating the flash, both for effect and distance, then your only option is to either increase your ISO sensitivity (with the result of higher noise) and or use a lens with a bright aperture - ie small f-number.

A great investment for any Canon owner is a 50mm lens - they do three and the f1.4 in the middle is a great choice. It'll gather 16 times more light than a kit lens at f5.6, so allows you to shoot in low light without increasing your ISO too much. That said, you may still need to increase it a bit, say to 400 ISO.

You will be pleasantly surprised that even a Manfrotto monopod has a very nice price. that is unless you want a head on it. But for my purposes I just screw the camera directly on the single "leg", shoot only in landscape orientation and tilt back and forth to get the right angle. Might not fit your photographic task though...

You will be pleasantly surprised that even a Manfrotto monopod has a very nice price. that is unless you want a head on it. But for my purposes I just screw the camera directly on the single "leg", shoot only in landscape orientation and tilt back and forth to get the right angle. Might not fit your photographic task though...

I will be in one spot only. Doesn't monopod also require to be steady when taking longer shutter speed? Monopod is great for daylight photography but nighttime is kinda hard especially on longer exposures. (I think).....